A new disorder is plaguing teenagers: Sleep texting

Sunday

Dec 29, 2013 at 2:00 AM

Reading and responding to text messages while asleep — called "sleep texting" — is an abnormal sleep behavior, similar to sleepwalking. It's also a growing concern among doctors grappling with a sleep-deprived population: young people who can't be separated from their cellphones.

Allie Shah

MINNEAPOLIS — Olivia Priedeman, 17, woke one morning from a dream she had about making plans with a friend.

But it wasn't a dream. Her phone showed that during the night Priedeman had punched in her passcode, unlocked her phone and read a text message from her friend.

All while she was fast asleep.

"It was really weird," recalled Priedeman, a junior at the Blake School.

Weird, but not uncommon.

Reading and responding to text messages while asleep — called "sleep texting" — is an abnormal sleep behavior, similar to sleepwalking. It's also a growing concern among doctors grappling with a sleep-deprived population: young people who can't be separated from their cellphones. For teens, lack of sleep has been linked to obesity, high blood pressure and behavioral problems.

We tend to think of sleep in finite terms: You're either fully awake or fully asleep. But it's not that simple, said Dr. Andrew Stiehm, a sleep medicine specialist with Allina Health.

It's possible for the part of the brain that controls motor skills to wake up, while the part of the brain that governs memory and judgment may remain asleep. That's why some people can perform rote movements — such as walking, talking, texting or even driving — while they're sleeping.

Dr. Gerald Rosen, medical director of the pediatric sleep disorders program at Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota, considers sleep texting an automatic response, similar to how a mother responds to a baby crying in the middle of the night.

But Rosen sees sleep texting as a symptom of a larger problem: young peoples' overreliance on cellphones.

"For them, the cellphone is a life link," he said, "and this is central to how they view the world."

One in three teenagers sends more than 100 text messages a day, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. And at least four out of five teens said they sleep with their phone on or near their bed.

For families with tweens and teens, texting in bed after "lights out" has become common, said Dr. Marjorie Hogan, a pediatrician at Hennepin County Medical Center. That's why she suggests establishing a "media curfew," docking all electronic devices outside the bedroom at a fixed time.